Daesh Commanders Killed in Iraqi Airstrike near Syria Border

Local Editor

Several top commanders of the Takfiri Daesh [Arabic acronym for "ISIS" / "ISIL"] terrorist group had been killed along with a number of other militants an Iraqi aerial attack in the western province of Anbar, media reports said.

In a statement released late on Monday, the Iraqi Joint Special Operations Command said Iraqi bombers hit their gathering in the town of Qaim.

Among those killed was a high-ranking intelligence director who was a close ally to the so-called leader of the terrorist group, Ibrahim al-Samarrai, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it said.

The unnamed intelligence director was reportedly responsible for orchestrating a string of terrorist attacks including a recent bomb attack in the strategic city of Hit.

He was an officer in Iraq's defunct General Directorate of Intelligence under slain dictator Saddam Hussein. He had worked with terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before pledging allegiance to Baghdadi.

Commander of the militants Tabuk Battalion operating inside both Syria and Iraq also died in the air raid.

Daesh press director in Baghdad and southern Iraqi regions, a fugitive from Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq, sustained injuries in the attack, and succumbed to his grave wounds later on.

Separately, Kurdish Peshmerga forces had launched an operation against the Daesh terrorists in Kazir region, which lies northeast of the militant-held city of Mosul.

Arif Tayfour, a spokesman for Peshmerga forces, said on Monday that his fellow fighters had killed 140 Daesh members over the past two days and purged more than 130 square kilometers of the area of the terrorists.

Tayfour added that four Peshmerga fighters lost their lives during the cleanup operation.

Moreover, Daesh extremists had abducted 100 young residents of Fallujah, located roughly 69 kilometers [43 miles] west of Baghdad, on trumped-up charges of not growing beard and refusal to join the ranks of the militant outfit in battles against government forces and allied Popular Mobilization Units fighters.

Majid al-Jarisi, a tribal elder from Fallujah, told Arabic-language al-Sumaria satellite television network that the terrorists took away the youths to an unknown location and there is no information about their whereabouts.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team